20 Living in Revolution
them. These are the salt of the earth and the light of the
world in their several generations. They connect us with an
innumerable company of faithful people which the Bible
calls the “fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” We trace them
back over a long trail that leads through our family to a
legion of battlers for lost causes, who have helped make
our life and whom we do not want to let down. We owe
everything good to these discoverers who through uncondi-
tional faithfulness have pioneered the open ways that were
hid from the “wise and prudent.”
This society of the conscientious, justified not by their
perfection but by their faithfulness, is what Christ called
the “leaven” in the great lump of humanity. It is a society
within society, and effective all out of proportion to its num-
bers; not ordered or compelled; open especially to those
who have clearest appreciation of their own shortcomings;
leaving out none who wish to enter save the proud, self-
righteous, and intolerant, who exclude themselves; respect-
ing integrity in everyone from the least to the greatest; exist-
ing in all countries, races and classes, yet confined to none;
in all churches, yet represented truly by none; supporting
all states, yet finally subject to none; aggressively defending
a free conscience freely shared. They are the carriers of
the divine discontent, forever seeking, asking, knocking at
doors which others are loth to try. The future is theirs.
Time, the tester of all things, is on their side. They are
the “terrible meek” who inherit the earth.
★
The conclusion of the whole matter is that this one
justifiable type of life, which cannot be produced by the
power of any state, is chiefly fostered at first in our smallest
and most potential social unit—the family. There each new
generation learns unconsciously whom to believe. This is